Tuesday marked the opening of the third session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, bringing together anti-racism activists, human rights defenders, government delegations and others.
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UN rights experts called on States in the global North on Thursday to forgo intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments in the name of human rights.
For Valdecir Nascimento, 63, the Black movement in Brazil was a “turning point” for her as a young woman, leading her from the revolutionary stilt houses in Alagados, to joining more than 1,000 participants last week at UN Headquarters for the second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
This week the UN hosts the 2nd Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent – the human rights platform which brings together institutions at the UN, civil society and others, to advance equality and fight racism.
The Forum’s Chair, Epsy Campbell Barr, said it was vital to boost investment to help the poorest of the poor, and meet “elemental demands” for basic services like clean water.
She spoke to UN News’s Pauline Batista in our studio at UN Headquarters in New York.
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday heard powerful testimony from the brother of George Floyd, whose death, captured on video, while a police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes in Minneapolis, has sparked worldwide protest.
The coronavirus outbreak may have forced millions around the world already into “social distancing”, keeping a metre apart to prevent its spread, but it will not stop them from uniting to combat racism, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared in Geneva on Friday.
The acknowledgement by the United States authorities of police brutality against African Americans is a “first step” to addressing the problem, according to a senior UN human rights official.
A series of high-profile cases in which people have died at the hands of the police have made headlines in the US over the past year.
